“Sometimes I think you protest too much,” Vanessa said. “I’ve heard you torment him, provoke him and generally be a bit of a bitch, but then I’ve seen him carry you upstairs to bed when you’ve had a few too many to drink one night and when he is in the same room as you, you’re like a fly around sugar with him.”
“Fly around shit,” I corrected. “I just find him annoying. I’ve known him since I was sixteen. He’s like another brother.”
“I wouldn’t be thinking of him as another brother,” Sophie said. “I’d be having a lot of unsisterly thoughts about what I’d do with him naked.”
“You don’t know what you’d catch,” I said, looking interested in the mimosa Vanessa had just passed to me.
“He seems like a decent bloke too,” Sophie continued. “I wouldn’t be too worried about where he’d been, just what he was able to demonstrate.”
I heard Vanessa laugh and felt her eyes on me. “Right,” I said. “Stop there. Where exactly is this conversation meant to be going.”
“Where would you like it to go?” Vanessa said. “Because we’ve got all day to discuss this, so don’t think you’re being saved by those three pilfering breakfast.” She gestured to where Jackson, Max and Callum were, her gaze fixing on Jackson. “If only I wasn’t dressed already.”
“Please remember that he is my brother and I really don’t need any information,” I said, chugging the mimosa. It was only ten-thirty but my psychic abilities told me that for today, alcohol would be an essential.
Sophie shook her head. “You just haven’t gotten any for a while. If you were getting it on the regular you wouldn’t care about the details.”
“How do you know I haven’t had sex for a while?” I said, frowning at her. I liked Sophie a lot and we regularly met with Vanessa to sample the treatments her chain of spas offered.
“The way you walk. It’s like your pussy’s seizing up,” Sophie said, her eyes still flickering between Callum and Max’s bare chests, having the decency to stay off Jackson’s. “I know you have this case going on, but that doesn’t mean you have to starve yourself of meat.”
“Says she who had a month of self-imposed abstinence and ended up putting on a stone,” I said quietly as Jackson had come over to us and was trying to wipe sweat on Vanessa. I figured we needed a bet on how long it would take for the two of them to meet up in Oxford and find a relatively clean bathroom to fornicate in.
“It taught me the importance regular sex has on mental health. And that it acts in same way a diet would do,” she said, placing a hand on her flat stomach.
“So who has helped you shed that stone?” I asked, trying to divert Sophie’s attention from my desert-like vagina.
She shook her head and mooched over to the chef, pointing out a few items that would need some burning off later.
“What’s your caffeine level up to?” Callum said as he approached. “Are you at ‘everyone die’ level or just ‘everyone fuck off’?”
I glared at him, knowing that I hadn’t had enough of anything to help me tolerate his ability to irritate the complete fuck out of me. Although Seph was the youngest boy and definitely was teased as such, Callum was the baby. The year between mum dying and dad bringing Marie home had been a difficult one that I didn’t really remember, or I tried not to. What I did recall was how the three of us, me, Max and Jackson, tried our best to look after Cal. By the time the twins and Ava were born we were adept at looking after a small child, but we weren’t responsible for them full time, whereas with Cal, we had been to a certain degree. The day mum had died the cleaning lady hadn’t turned up as her daughter had been taken in to hospital. She’d text mum, but by that time it was too late and the three of us spent the morning playing and looking after Callum as mum’s room was locked, which hadn’t been that unusual, unfortunately.
“I’m at ‘Callum fuck off’ level but can manage to be civil to everyone else,” I snarked. “How’s the job?”
He sat down next to me and nodded. I inched away, in no hurry to get any of his sweat on me. “It’s good. I’m working with some interesting people and it’s a challenge. In a different way to being abroad.”
“Are you stopping long term?” Callum had travelled extensively since graduating as a vet, picking up jobs for various animal charities or projects abroad and documenting them on his YouTube channel and via social media. I’d hated him being away, still nursing the instinct to look after him even though he was now thirty.
“I think so. I can do work oversees for the zoo, but there’s opportunities here that I can explore as well,” he said, smiling slightly. “It’s nice to be back. I’m glad I’m not missing the build-up to the wedding and I give it a year after that before we have a nephew or a niece, tops.”
“You give any thought to buying a property yet?” I asked, still nervous that he was take off to Borneo or somewhere else equally far. When he bought somewhere I would feel more confident that he was actually staying and the wanderlust was at bay.
He shrugged. “I’ve started to look. I’d like somewhere near to Jackson and Max. I like the idea of being near everyone.”
“Let me know if you want me to look at any properties with you,” I said, finishing the mimosa and debating a coffee, a good strong one that would assist with helping me deal with the wedding and sex-drought bullshit that was bound to come my way. “I’ll stop you getting ripped off.”
“Callum, go and get a shower before you get sweat everywhere. I swear to the saints in heaven you boys were brought up in a barn!” Marie swiftly clocked him across the head with a tea towel and he got up sharpish, rubbing his ear.
“Yeah, sis, it’s good to be home,” he said, following Max and Jackson out of the kitchen towards the bedrooms.
Half past eleven saw Vanessa, Sophie, Amelie and myself strolling into the limo dad had arranged. We looked put together and controlled with no issues walking in heels. All would be very different for the return trip, I knew.
“So,” Sophie said, popping open a bottle of chilled champagne when we were settled in the car. “When’s the last time you had sex, Claire?”
“Why are we doing this?” I asked, gratefully accepting a glass. “It doesn’t matter when the last time I had sex was. What matters is getting a good idea for what colour Vanessa wants her wedding to be themed around and having a good time today. How’s the business plan for the man spa coming along?”
Sophie smiled knowingly. “It’s in action. Van’s team are sorting the marketing with the grand opening in September. But it takes a lot more to distract me than that.”
